


with the wild wolves around you

by peterstank



Series: white winter hymnal [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, I love them all, also rip theon i always loved you, and a rest, arya deserves some fucking appreciation, listen there will never be enough post battle fics, post 8x03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-10 14:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18661852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterstank/pseuds/peterstank
Summary: She has already begun to pull at the laces of her gambeson, and Gendry helps her to push it off of her shoulders. Neither of them speak as they work to strip her, fingers fumbling with straps and strings, but as he gets to the kerchief she’s tied round her neck he stills.“Arya…”Her hands close around his own. “I’m alright.”The truth settles low and heavy within him, a white-fire thing that makes him sick, it spills out of him like liquid metal: “You did it.”“Don’t tell anyone.” She is practically begging though only with her face, the rest of her is rigid and unrelenting as a hailstorm, she is fireflame and howling winds and cold slaps that flush cheeks pink; “I don’t want to be the hero.”He doesn’t know what to say to that, because to him, she has only ever been one.{in the wake of the battle, propriety can get fucked — post 8.03}





	with the wild wolves around you

~ o ~

sansa

  
Bran—

He is the first thing she sees and his name is on the tip of her tongue, sweet like honey, twisting her lips up into a forgotten smile for he is her baby brother and he is alive; but like the sweet she favours, the name dies in her throat swallowed by the sour taste rising.

Bodies are strewn over the hoarfrost but there is only one face amongst them that she recognises.

His body is like ice, the snow has wrapped itself around him like a kiss of winter. It has turned his lips blue, it has claimed his life, he is indistinguishable from the monsters freshly slain; a creature of the wood, a terrible sight.

Yet his eyes are still brown, like warmth, like salvation, like hands stretching toward flames seeking a bloodrush, like mothers clutching sons, like a laugh that ripples across the stillness of the night; dimmed now—a hearth grasping the tether of its last embers, ready to be suffocated by a cold breath—they stare unseeing at the canopy of leaves above.

Mindless of the others she goes to him, and Bran will understand or perhaps not care at all, and her fingers hover now over his pearl white skin, unsure of what to touch should he shatter in her grasp. They find home against his cheeks, there are silver flakes of snow in his beard, she holds onto him now as she had done before years ago—

(shivering, freezing in her room, bite marks on her arms, bruises on her collar, hair a tangled mess of copper and he had stood cowering before her, trying to fold into himself as she spoke the words _You are Theon Greyjoy, last living son of Balon Greyjoy, lord of the Iron Islands_ )

—when he had failed to save her.

She can’t save him, now.

A hand closes around her shoulder, small like a child’s only rough, calloused, barren of leather and chilled with the bite in the air. Tyrion stares at her with sad eyes. It’s an expression she can’t bear to witness, a stone she does not want cast toward her.

“My lady…”

Sansa almost rips herself away but no, Theon would want her to be brave, Ramsay can’t hurt them now and Tyrion never will. Her former husband is no stranger to her coldness, to her rigidity, she is a woman of winter and even as the little dove in the gleaming cage their marriage provided, there had been a gust of balmy air between them.

Her fingers curl around the broken shaft of the staff which had ripped through his steel plate and belly. She pulls, something between a grunt and a sob escaping her. The wound is a chasm, ebony frosted, mulberry wine dripping congealed over her skirt and fingers.

Sansa tosses the weapon aside, that thing which had stolen his last breath, and pulls him closer by the straps of his armour. His head in her lap, she gently closes his eyes with trembling fingers.

Once the pious child, knees bloody on the floor of the little sept, colours spilling through stained glass, the sunkissed reds and blues and purples were her skin and the hymns were stories her heart sang; now there are no prayers left inside her and no gods worth believing in. If there were, Theon would still be alive, her Father would still be alive; and monsters like Cersei Lannister would long be dust.

“We will bury him in the crypt.”

Tyrion nods and glances over his shoulder at the guards standing behind them, but then another figure pushes through when they fail to move in time.

Before she knows it he is kneeling with her, he will never pray to anyone but the Stranger yet even so his hands are gentle as they pry him from her grasp; she is not crying but inside she screams, the world falls to ruin, _it already has—_

“Little Bird,” he says, rasping but softly, he won’t hurt her either, ever. “You have to let him go.”

Sansa keeps her grip for a moment longer as finally a tear spills hot down her cheek, salt for the dead sea, and then pulls her hands away.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and does not flinch as she looks upon his face.

Sandor says nothing, silent as he cradles the body and carries Theon away. Tyrion holds out a hand and suddenly she is one-and-three, marble cold and rough against her knees, blood dripping hot down her back with white knuckles around a dirtied kingsguard cloak; and there he is, the best of them, sorry in his eyes, _lady sansa you may survive us yet._

With his help she picks up what remains of her dignity and stands, moving for Bran who waits patient and pale by the god-tree, its face weeping scarlet tears while his remains impassive.

“Are you alright?”

“What I am doesn’t matter. You must find Arya.”

It is the most human he has been in so long.

~ o ~

  
gendry

  
She is standing in the middle of her chambers, the only thing that does not quite belong among the fine furs and polished oaken furniture. Her boots are bloody against the stones and she is dripping with it, staring at nothing in particular, a thousand miles away from him and more.

“Arya,” he says, quiet so as not to startle, like anything can scare her anymore. She is fear itself, she is death, she is a wraith of shadow slinking from one darkness to the next, slipping into something deeper each time.

Even so her eyes flit to him, whirling storms of grey, the same as always but different too; she has built a wall of granite between him and her heart but he had seen what lay beneath before the bailey was borne. He knows that she is good, she is warm, she is mercy and laughter and wide eyes and dirty hands against his shoulders pushing with all her lack of might.

His instinct is to leave her here with a short bow, now that she is safe behind the heavy door that separates her from the outside world; he is a bastard, not befit to keep the company of a highborn lady.

But it’s _Arya_.

The next he knows his hands are on hers; smaller than his own, blood under her nails, caked on her palms, covered in nicks and scratches. These are the hands of a warrior, not a maiden, not a mother, not a crone. He has never been a devout man and never cared to worship the Seven, but he thanks this one god now—the Warrior, for seeing her through; or mayhap it is her he should thank rather, perhaps she is the god.

“Arya,” he says again, and she blinks up at him, tilting her chin, more quiet than he has ever seen her in his life. She has settled into the throes of shock, she is letting it consume her; inside she must be screaming. He imagines she might hit him under normal circumstances, push him away, call him _stupid_ and say she can handle herself,

(he misses that most of all, misses how bold and brazen she had been; a wildfire that burned and spread over all of them, all of _him_ , turned his heart to a sweltering molten mess)

but right now she can’t and it breaks his heart.

He touches her cheek, an open hand against her skin, and with a barely perceptible nod her approval is given. Gendry swallows rough and hesitates, unsure what to do first, unsure how to begin.

But if she is the warrior he is a smith, she is asking him to fix her, and every project requires a clean surface to work with.

The copper tub in the corner of the room had been set out by someone, a servant who must have been hiding away during the battle, otherwise he’s not quite sure how they got through the horror enough to prepare the lady’s bath. There is steam curling off of the surface of the water, light silver plumes that fade into nothing—

—they could fade away too, sail somewhere that isn’t here, go somewhere men have never walked…

She has already begun to pull at the laces of her gambeson, and Gendry helps her to push it off of her shoulders. Neither of them speak as they work to strip her, fingers fumbling with straps and strings, but as he gets to the kerchief she’s tied round her neck he stills.

“Arya…”

Her hands close around his own. “I’m alright.”

The truth settles low and heavy within him, a white-fire thing that makes him sick, it spills out of him like liquid metal: “You did it.”

“Don’t tell anyone.” She is practically begging though only with her face, the rest of her is rigid and unrelenting as a hailstorm, she is fireflame and howling winds and cold slaps that flush cheeks pink; “I don’t want to be the hero.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, because to him, she has only ever been one.

Gendry shakes his head, running his fingers over the mark—it’s not a bruise, it’s a burn, something that had not been there the night before, spreading purple over her pale skin; it will never go away, like blackberry wine spilt on a fine dress she has been marked and stained and—

“Gendry,” she whispers, clutching at his wrists, small and silent now, doe-eyed but fierce, her claws are sharp. “I’m fine, I promise.”

He shakes his head for words fail him still. He cannot rip his fingers away. Next he knows he’s ducking down to press his lips there, feeling the unnatural chill of her skin. It is like kissing a corpse but everywhere else she is warm, he can hear her heart hammering loud against his own, and his other hand reaches up to curl around her pulse point.

“I’m too smelly,” she says to him, and it makes him laugh because he loved her in the wind, in the rain, when they waded through muck and blood; he loved her in the melted castle with the dead bodies and mud, he loves her in the ruin of this keep too, he’ll love her anywhere she’ll let him.

He doesn’t tell her that, though, for even if she’s braver than all the rest of them in the face of the worst enemies, she is skittish in the face of the warmest friend. “Come on,” he urges instead, and leads her over to the bath.

Her bones ache as his own do; it’s clear as she steps, stiff and trying not to grimace, over the rim of the tub. She hisses audibly as she sinks into the water, and immediately the loosest dirt melts off of her skin and makes the water bleed brown.

There is a separate bucket of fresh water by the tub, however; this servant must know battle, they must know how the baths aren’t really baths by the end.

He soaps the rag as she settles down with little grunts, her knuckles white around the edge, lips white in the corners, face white and drained with the effort of it all.

Slowly, softly, he cleans her of the mire like cleaning away dross; down her back, the water beads clear, over her shoulders, on her neck and ears and down her arms. Again and again he rings out the rag and brings it back to the surface of her skin, swiping away the speckles that hide the porcelain.

“Gendry?”

“Aye?”

Her face is clean for she had scrubbed it herself, rosy with the heat, a bruise is blossoming over her eye and cheek and the wound above her eye gapes ebon and wide.

But she is crying. The tears on her cheeks have fallen in silence, her eyes are rimmed red, she is broken like the rest of them, a pile of bones waiting to be sliced in half someday.

“Thank you,” she says, soft like a whisper, her voice is a silken thing now, a far cry from her brash childhood tones.

Gendry leans forward and kisses the wetness away. “Anything for m’lady.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a sort-of continuation of my most recent fic, but it can totally be read on its own of course. I just have _so many feelings and ideas_ about what happens after the battle and I thought I might jot down a couple more. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, my dears! Lmk what you thought <3


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